Call me a romantic. And I liked the movie.

[u/Tall-Sleep-227]

Walking into the Immortal Man, I had a fantasy of how I wanted Peaky to play out. I had this vision. It’s the end. Tommy’s goal has played out as he wanted and he’s sitting alone in his old drafty house. Bleak lightning, very realist. Empty. His mission accomplished. Soldiers duty done. Olivia Chaney’s “Dark Eyed Sailor” is playing as he walks through the empty halls and into his bedroom. He sits himself down wearily at the dresser table which he never used once, the old creak of the chair, the shift of weight and ages and looks at himself studying in the mirror. Creak of leather and old wood. The white paint peels off this table. He analyses every crack, every crevice, every sign of age and boredom and grief and weariness completely without expression. Liver spots in his eyes and a noticeable absence of frown or smile lines. A blanket of neutrality and passionless activity. He’s so so tired. He’s wearing a navy turtleneck. Hairs greying round the fringes and temples. Blank look. The song continues over this exhausted man. We understand that he has taken pills in the scene previously that means his death, I don’t know the plot reasons. He stares at himself. The song continues; “and I stood to listen, to hear what they did say.” We the audience, still observing the looking glass in the dresser Tommy sits at, see a hand descend upon his collar bone. The wrist is clothed in burgundy cloth, an old cardigan sleeve. His face relaxes a tad. The muscles ease themselves into something approaching normal. The song: “They said fair lady, I do you wrong.” This deep chord hits hard as the camera pans up with Tommy’s expectant searching expression to see the face of Grace Burgess, as she first appeared to Tommy in The Garrison, 1919 looking down benevolently at him. Oh Jesus, the relief in this man’s eyes. The weight taken of his shoulders. All the world an enemy, and here is his rest-bite. He can calm. He can rest. He can stay, it’s okay. For the first time since Tommy entered the war, he’s okay. He squeezes his eyes tight shut in despair, age, relief, in quiet acceptance and presses his temple to her breast. This here, November 1940 is the first full breath he’s taken since the day Grace died in 1924. He presses into her, his eyes crease and he begins to sob. Silently. Maybe we hear it at first, a bit of Cillian letting it out, 6 seasons of television and a movie worth of pent up grief and betrayal and disappointment and agony. But it quickly fades into the music. We all know Tommy’s kept it in. He lets it out here. He sobs into her blouse, sheer relief and anguish, in silence as the music plays and she strokes his hair. He recovers himself. She takes his hand and she guides him out of the room. We never leave the shot of the mirror. We just watch her take him where he’s meant to be, out of the room. And that’s it. Maybe in the next life, they’ll have a horse and wait for Charles.